They sent Cheney to represent us. He’s probably strolling around and jotting down ideas.

Posted by: OkieByAccident | Jan 27 2005 22:01 utc | 3

jérôme
i’m afraid we learnt nothing – nothing at all – except the bad lessons
raul hilberg was correct – all the steps that led to the shoah were not new – they were adapted from old laws & prejudices. i don’t have his book with me – but he characterises all the steps – laws, ghettoisation, territorial imperatives, exclusion – but he said in the systematic way they used anhilation was new – was something that the germans had invented – that the mass production of death was a german invention
nothing was learnt
we possess a genocidal character – somewhere in our souls & that is what dante was teaching us – & in his way so too beckett
we needed to adress that question – we didn’t. from korea till today – we have continued in a long line of anhilations. the of of them all is the victims doing exactly the same thing to the palestinians. they are liquidating a population – they are killing without prejudice all their dreams & desires & the actual killing of the physical entity of the palestinian people seems to me sometimes only a question of time
in the east – whether it is poland in ukraine – in all the baltic – in russia – in fact in large swathes of the east the heartpulse of extirminatory practices towards the jews still exists except there are no jews. poland is judenfrei – for all intents & purposes & it likes it that way – never once has it or the ukraine really spoke of their shame & their guilt – nor explained to the world that after the second waorld war there were a number of significant pogroms
no the stain of that genocidal practice is still with us – yugoslavia was another eyeopening lesson – soo too the way czechs deal with gypsies is not a thousand miles away from the ideas that fed fascism
the west lives off the burial ground of all the murders that have been committed in civilisation’s name, in democracy’s name
we’ve learnt nothing – as finklestein has sd in his book even with the shoah we are so degraded that we have created a shoahbusiness
we can treat the third world with the indignity we do because we have learnt nothing
the american empire is built on a genocidal practice – to speak numbers is yet another way to try to make the sordid clean
our hearts are not clear – a jean marie le pen could not exist – if they were – or any of the creeps that direct our beautiful europe – who hate jews & arabs in equal measure – who instead of celebrating difference try to exterminate it
i go back to the vietnamese because they fought ‘a beautiful war’ – they fought for something that transcends the petit vulgarities of modern man. they were not absolutists neither religiously nor politically. their ‘communism’ is a complete integration of what the vietnamese people are
as i’ve sd often here – i don’t see any essential difference between the american administration & al quaeda – i don’t see any fundamental difference in their character – they detest people in the name of their fucking gods & their civilisations & they will go on killing more & more people to that end
we are going through the circles of hell – yet there is something in humanity which is capable of transformation & it is often found in struggle -i hope beyond all reasonable measure – that we can honour the struggle of the peoples that proceeded us – especially the indigenous people who have never lost their physical relation to the terre
in sadness

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 27 2005 22:33 utc | 5

rememberinggiap: nothing was learnt
Nope. But, “civilization” as we “know” it is not about learning, is it? It is all about stasis. Learning jostles everything about, and hints at chaos, and makes a lot of people very anxious. Can’t have anxiety. No sir.
Barkeep! More Soma for the house.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 27 2005 22:44 utc | 7

rememberinggiap… I should have also introduced my comment with the disclaimer I don’t think it to be about a genocidal character. It was the introduction of the new and improved “civilization” five to ten thousand years ago that did it.
The whole “genocidal character” thing to me sounds terribly deterministic and not accurate. I don’t think of flawed beings and brains. I think instead of flawed visions, plans, and programs, interlocked with the strict hierarchical systems of the first of the most organized civilizations.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 27 2005 23:35 utc | 9

Off the subject but relevent in a sence. A site to go to is: http://www.wanttoknow.info

Posted by: jdp | Jan 28 2005 0:09 utc | 11

And, of course, IBM was there helping the Nazis organize it every step of the way.

Posted by: SusanG | Jan 28 2005 0:25 utc | 13

Alabama… Frost is my self-adopted grandfather. Sigh. I wrote a poem to him ten or more years ago, and right now I can’t find my book, THE book… the collected works. I wan’t to quote “The Lesson for Today” I hate good intentions, even when they’re mine. Grrrrr… I’ll find it. More later.

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Jan 28 2005 2:31 utc | 15

Now posted at Kos for your friendly (and effective) European morning recommendations…

Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 28 2005 7:29 utc | 17

Haunted Ground – Poland to Palestine
the headline is mine – i have perhaps too strong an attraction to alliteration – the rest below is quoted, but expresses very well what i have thought for decades – as a gentile i have refrained from pointing it out to my jewish friends, some of whom have been so close to me that they told me the joke of the difference between a pizza and a jew – the pizza doesn’t scream when you put it in the oven – but since the hour is getting late, let us not talk falsely – and when b speaks of his shame as a german, i have been feeling more intensely than ever my shame as an american – last year i would argue with friends that america had done more good than bad in the world, but now i have to admit – not recently – and of course the foundation of the u.s. of a. is built on the genocide of the native americans, and the bricks were mortared together with the blood of the negroes – as i understand it, the essence of jesus’s message is – you can be forgiven – but to be forgiven you must repent, and that repentance is what america has not yet brought itself to, and in fact the so-called “christian right” works to bring us further away from it – but i go on too long – here is what i believe is worth reading
IDD: ISRAELI DENIAL DYSFUNCTION
AVIGAIL ABARBANEL, PEACE PALESTINE –
When an individual, a group or an entire society live with a dark secret or are in denial about something important in their past, they cannot experience peace. It is simply impossible to live a ‘normal’ or peaceful life on a foundation of lies and secrecy.
Denying the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948, trying to not think about the consequences of long years of brutal occupation, and just wishing for it all to go away is no more than a fantasy. In family therapy there is an accepted principle that unless serious injustices are addressed, there cannot be real peace. Families that protect dark secrets always pay a heavy price. I watched Israeli intellectuals on TV engage in genuine discussion trying to analyse and understand why things are so bad in Israel. They raised every possible reason for the situation other than the most obvious one – Israel’s history.
It was excruciating to watch but also familiar. I have never seen a society so steeped in denial as Israeli society. The entire spectrum of Israeli politics is in denial about Israel’s history and this is why I do not have much faith in the Israeli left. The handful that are not in denial like Dr Ilan Pappe who visited Australia last year, or Dr Uri Davis, exist outside this spectrum. Their research into the events of 1948 and the circumstances surrounding the birth of the state of Israel is not discussed on public television and is not in Israeli history books. The average Israeli does not even know who they are. Although published by reputable publishers like Cambridge University Press, Dr Pappe’s books have so far been refused publication in Hebrew. The reason offered is that they lack academic merit.
The way most Israelis perceive their own history is as if they have always been the weak victim. The question of whether or not it was morally right or even wise to create a state at the expense of another people is never raised. No one in the mainstream questions the validity of democracy in a country where the right for citizenship is based on race (you can only become an Israeli citizen if you can prove that your mother is Jewish).
When Israelis engage in ‘peace talks’ it is important to understand their basic position. They have no real interest in a solution that goes to the core of their problem. They are like an individual who wants his or her symptoms to go away but refuses to do anything about their real causes. A wish ‘to be left alone’ is not much of a basis for a sustainable peace, at least not without another act of ethnic cleansing. Five million Palestinians are there to remind Israel of its past, and they are not going anywhere.
If a day comes, and I hope it does, when Israelis decide to stop living in denial, they will have to realize that real peace will only come through justice. Justice in this context means one thing, that the ideal of an exclusively Jewish state at the cost of an entire people might have to be abandoned. Only a bi-national state and a right of return for the Palestinian refugees will come close enough to rectifying some of the injustices committed in 1948 and since. Having been ethnically cleansed, this is also what the Palestinians are entitled to under international law and common human decency.
This could be Israel’s atonement. It will also be Israel’s opportunity to free itself from carrying this burden of guilt that I believe is making their lives and the lives of the Palestinians a nightmare. Yes, it will be a challenge. But it will offer a possibility of real and sustainable peace both for Israelis and for Palestinians, possibly for the entire region. Continuing with the mentality and policy of denial will lead nowhere, and will continue to cost the lives and well being of many more people and communities.
[Avigail Abarbanel is a former Israeli and a former Staff Sergeant in the Israeli military. She is a psychotherapist/counsellor in private practice in Canberra Australia and an activist for Palestinian rights. This article appeared originally in Peace Palestine]
________________________
http://prorev.com/2005/01/idd-israeli-denial-dysfunction.htm

Posted by: mistah charley | Jan 28 2005 14:55 utc | 19

OK it is WSWS, and the WhizWhiz is not everyone’s cuppa, but their comments on Cheney at Auschwitz are interesting:

Who is Cheney to represent the American people at Auschwitz? The US vice president is identified with the most right-wing political forces in America. In the 1980s, as a Republican congressman from Wyoming, he acted as a defender of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, voting against a resolution calling for an end to the quarter-century imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. Currying favor with homegrown racists, he likewise voted against the decision to make Martin Luther King’s birthday an official holiday.
As defense secretary in the administration of Bush the elder and in his current role as vice president, he has been the most vociferous proponent of the use of military force to achieve Washington’s global aims. He oversaw the first Persian Gulf War and acted as a principal organizer of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, orchestrating a campaign of public deception and propaganda that had no precedent since the days of the Hitlerite “big lie.”
In between, he enriched himself as the chief executive officer of the oil industry giant Halliburton, a principal Pentagon contractor from whose war profiteering the vice president stands to reap future dividends.
Cheney’s entire political and business career strongly suggests that if, by a twist of fate, he had grown to maturity in pre-war Germany rather than in the post-war United States, he would have found his way either into the Nazi regime or among the corporate criminals who financed the Nazis and profited off of the slave labor of concentration camp inmates.[…]
In Europe in general, and Poland in particular, Bush’s failure to attend the commemoration himself was taken as a significant slight. An even more glaring expression of Washington’s indifference apparently went unnoticed—at least by the pliant media. Sections of Cheney’s speech were lifted virtually unchanged from an address given by Bush when the US president and his wife made a quick tour of the camp a year-and-a-half ago (see: “A presidential visit to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and the Bush family fortune”).
Cheney, like Bush before him, came to Auschwitz with one purpose in mind: to twist and exploit the atrocities of Hitlerite fascism to justify Washington’s own acts of aggression and inhumanity.

(I have changed the order of these para from the original).

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 28 2005 18:34 utc | 21

DeAnander – Cheney clearly expressed how he felt about Auschwitz

At yesterday’s gathering of world leaders in southern Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the United States was represented by Vice President Cheney. The ceremony at the Nazi death camp was outdoors, so those in attendance, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were wearing dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots. Because it was cold and snowing, they were also wearing gentlemen’s hats. In short, they were dressed for the inclement weather as well as the sobriety and dignity of the event.
The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.
Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children’s clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.
Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one’s country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words “Staff 2001.” It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag.
It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots — thick, brown, lace-up ones. Did he think he was going to have to hike the 44 miles from Krakow — where he had made remarks earlier in the day — to Auschwitz? WaPo

Posted by: b | Jan 28 2005 20:23 utc | 23

Holocaust time once more. Maybe better this year. Or worse. Who knows. Worse, probably. Bad, certainly.
There is Marta, Bosnian, ebullient, flirtatious, flamboyant, poor, opinionated. She lives with her aunt and other children, the aunt comes to every PTA meeting.
And Stefan, he is Swiss, he looks like Heidi’s brother, bue eyed, stalwart, up. Stef has never set foot in Poland but speaks Polish and some Russian too. His father has passed every scrap, every detail, of his history to Stef. The father comes to PTA, every time. Quiet. Sometimes forceful.
And Farik. Swiss, yes. Father a doctor, mother a something good, he is darker than a Tuareg, sharp, now half his hair is orange – blue would be better. He is cool and smooth, girl friends and all but you feel a darkness.
Once the Holocaust is over, you will learn that his grand-father, his grand-uncle, and his uncle were tortured to death by Aussaresses. You finally looked him up in the register and saw that he arrived as an unaccompanied minor, at Kloten airport, age 6, no baggage. You don’t know what his mother went through — many years later, you will find out.
Farik will be, to your surprise, the first to leave the class, well after the Holocaust. He will be gone, no news.
There is Sebastian, by the window. No worries there. His grandmother survived, you never saw her, never asked, heard from the others, and Sebastian told you a little. She died last year. Sebastian was at school next day. His parents have never come to the school.
The one who scares you is Max. He always sits right in back, dressed in black. He speaks Italian, and dialect, and reads German and English, and has top marks in languages. English, you know, he taught himself. His area of expertise is WW2, he has read all the books, and then some. Max knows more than you.
It is going to be a hard Holocaust.

Posted by: Blackie | Jan 29 2005 0:39 utc | 25